Why Aerys II Targaryen Is Known As The Mad King In Game Of Thrones

Throughout “Game of Thrones” — HBO’s massively popular fantasy series based on George R.R. Martin’s novel series “A Song of Ice and Fire” — we hear quite a bit about King Aerys II Targaryen, who earns the very flattering nickname “the Mad King” before his reign is officially cut short in 283 AC (I’ll circle back to how it was cut short before long, so hang tight). The father of Daenerys Targaryen, the self-crowned Mother of Dragons played throughout the series by Emilia Clarke, Aerys is … a troubled man, to say the very least. It didn’t help matters that his parents, King Jaehaerys II Targaryen and Shaera Targaryen, were siblings; the whole Targaryen clan was a little too fond of incest, which led to a saying repeated throughout “A Song of Ice and Fire” and “Game of Thrones” — “Every time a Targaryen is born, the gods flip a coin.” (Crossing bloodlines over and over again isn’t necessarily great for said bloodlines’ overall health, so Aerys’ madness could very well have been a genetic problem.)

Earlier on in his reign, Aerys II Targaryen, who took over the Iron Throne in 262 AC — which in Westeros means “After the Conquest,” referring to the day Aegon the Conqueror was crowned — married his own sister Rhaella and was a relatively decent ruler. With Ser Tywin Lannister (played on “Game of Thrones” by Charles Dance) by his side as the Hand of the King and a dream to be the greatest king in the history of the Seven Kingdoms, Aerys begins his reign full of promise. So what happened, and why did Aerys earn the nickname “Mad King?”

Aerys has big dreams as King of the Seven Kingdoms, but his attention span is on the short side, so he neglects to bring most of his big plans to fruition … and as he declines, Tywin Lannister’s strength and influence only grows, leading to a current of distrust between the King and his Hand. Aerys was also known to keep many mistresses and covet what he couldn’t have, leading to a very awkward situation between Aerys and Tywin where, when the latter marries his beloved wife, Joanna, Aerys apparently insists that he had a “right” to Tywin’s new bride first. (Fan theories over whether or not Peter Dinklage’s Tyrion Lannister is a secret Targaryen center largely around the idea that Aerys followed through on this threat.) Not only does this drive more of a wedge between the two men, but rumors swirl throughout Westeros that Tywin is the one really ruling the realm, which royally pisses Aerys off. Then, as the king deals with the tragic death of a few of his children at a young age, he experiences some of his earliest bouts of madness, even going so far as to behead a wet nurse who nursed one of his late sons. (He also has the baby’s mother, one of his mistresses, tortured and killed along with her whole family.)

The relationship between Tywin and Aerys breaks down even further when the former tries to throw a tourney to celebrate one of Aerys’ surviving sons, Viserys, in apparent good faith — but when Tywin suggests that his daughter Cersei (played in the series by Lena Headey) and Aerys’ eldest son Rhaegar could form a political marriage, Aerys basically declares that Cersei isn’t highborn enough for his son, causing the largest rift between the two yet. None of this is helped by an event known as the Defiance of Duskendale, wherein an angry lord (Lord Denys Darklyn of, well, Duskendale) sets a trap for Aerys and holds the king captive for several months. After Ser Barristan Selmy, played in “Game of Thrones” by Ian McElhinney, rescues Aerys, he gets revenge on House Darklyn by having all of them killed, which isn’t a great sign in regards to Aery’s mindset at the time.

The Defiance of Duskendale certainly doesn’t leave Aerys in a good headspace — in fact, he basically locks himself in King’s Landing’s fortress The Red Keep, and assumes that everybody in the world is officially out to “get” him. Though Aerys starts to believe that Rhaegar and Tywin actually colluded to create the situation in Duskendale, which would give Tywin a chance to marry his daughter off to Rhaegar without Aerys’ interference, a larger issue with Rhaegar arises that captured the king’s attention — and fuels his fury.

Aerys ultimately orders Rhaegar to marry Princess Elia Martell of Dorne — and the two do marry in the Sept of Baelor in front of the kingdom’s elite — but in 282 AC, Rhaegar vanishes, and by all appearances kidnaps Lyanna Stark (the sister of Sean Bean’s lord Eddard Stark and intended wife of Mark Addy’s Robert Baratheon) in the process. Brandon Stark, Ned’s brother, personally rides to the Red Keep to order Rhaegar to come outside and fight him, only to discover that Rhaegar is nowhere to be found; Aerys has Brandon and all of his cohorts arrested. This brings Rickard Stark onto the scene, and after he demands a trial by combat, Aerys kills the Stark lord with wildfire, an all-consuming magical flame that, by this point, is his new favorite weapon. All hell truly breaks loose when Aerys demands that Lord Jon Arryn kill both Ned and Robert and present him with their heads; when the lord refuses to kill his allies, the war known as Robert’s Rebellion begins in earnest. Houses Arryn, Stark, Baratheon, Tully, and Greyjoy take one side, while the Targaryens are joined by Tyrell and Martell (the Lannisters, shrewdly, remain “neutral” between the two factions).

Due to the strife between Tywin Lannister and Aerys II Targaryen, the former steps down as Hand of the King before Robert’s Rebellion even truly begins, leaving Ser Owen Merryweather to serve as Hand; Aerys then runs through several hands (burning at least one alive) before he finds one who will fully do his bidding, choosing a man named Rossart who serves as the head of the Alchemist’s Guild (a group that has been unfailingly loyal to Aerys since the Defiance of Duskendale). Aerys also faces a ton of losses throughout this war; Rhaegar is killed by Robert at the Battle of the Trident, and Aerys makes literally one good choice by sending Rhaella away to Dragonstone with their remaining children Viserys and Daenerys. 

Wait, so why did I bring up Rossart as the Hand of the King? Here’s why. Aerys, who can see the war is about to end (and not in his favor), has a private chat with Rossart and Jaime Lannister, the head of his Kingsguard played in the series by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. When Aerys declares that he wants to level King’s Landing with wildfire so that he can win the war basically by default — killing countless innocents in the process — Rossart is on board, but Jaime is decidedly not. (Aerys, because he is “mad” by now, thinks that as a Targaryen he will be “immune” to the wildfire and even be transformed into a dragon in the process.) Aerys commands Rossart to set wildfire loose on the city — using underground caches he previously set up — and tells Jaime to kill Tywin, but Jaime takes matters into his own hands and kills both men, earning the nickname “Kingslayer.” (This is, like “Mad King,” not a flattering nickname, but Jaime doesn’t publicly disclose that Aerys was threatening to murder literally everyone in the surrounding area.) Tywin and Robert return to King’s Landing safely, Robert takes the Iron Throne, and the rest — meaning the entirety of “Game of Thrones” — is history. 

Okay, so what about Daenerys Targaryen, who becomes the only surviving heir of Aerys II Targaryen after her brother Viserys (Harry Lloyd) is (rightfully) killed by her new husband Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa)? (No, it really is a rightful killing; Viserys threatens Daenerys, at which point Drogo, unable to spill blood in the Dothraki city Vaes Dothraki, dumps a pot of molten gold on Viserys’ head.) At first, Daenerys seems … pretty awesome. After Drogo dies at the end of season 1 of “Game of Thrones,” Daenerys climbs into his funeral pyre with three dragon eggs; even though everyone thinks the eggs are purely decorative, Daenerys walks out of the ashes at dawn the next morning completely naked but adorned by three baby dragons, earning her the name “Mother of Dragons” and, to her mind, cementing her claim to the Iron Throne.

Daenerys spends most of “Game of Thrones” using those dragons to execute her enemies, and it’s usually in the interest of, say, freeing slaves or taking down genuinely evil forces … until the show’s final stretch, where Daenerys starts inheriting some of her father’s madness. When Tarly forces lose a battle to Daenerys in season 7, she executes Randyll and Dickon Tarly (James Faulkner and Tom Hopper), the father and brother of Samwell Tarly (John Bradley), when they refuse to bend the knee, so that’s not a great sign. Of course, all of this leads to the siege of King’s Landing in the series’ penultimate episode, season 8’s “The Bells,” where, atop her last living dragon Drogon, Daenerys hears the bells of surrender ringing out in the Westerosi capital and kills everybody there anyway. So, yeah … Daenerys eventually earns the moniker of “Mad Queen” all by herself, fulfilling her father’s legacy — and in a moment of true dramatic irony, she’s killed by her nephew and lover Jon Snow (Kit Harington), the secret son of the legally married couple Lyanna Stark and Rhaegar Targaryen. Plot twist!

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